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The EU chief negotiator will meet with the head of Boris Johnson’s Task Force Europe, Lord Frost, to try to start the stalled discussions. The pair are expected to hold informal talks in Downing Street ahead of the eighth round of formal negotiations in London next week.
Officials organized tomorrow’s meeting to try to inject new momentum into the dispute after despair on both sides over a lack of progress over the past month.
And tensions escalated yesterday when French Chancellor Jean-Yves Le Drian blamed the “uncompromising and unrealistic attitude of the UK” for the stalemate.
In an outburst to the French ambassadors, he claimed that the EU would not give in to accept Boris Johnson’s demand for a free trade agreement without guarantees of European fishing rights and commitments to obey a series of Brussels regulations.
“At Brexit we always show unity and prove wrong those who saw signs of a general implosion of Europe. It is by sticking together that we can maintain our line of a global agreement,” Le Drein said.
British officials responded, accusing the EU of making “unnecessarily difficult to move forward”.
A spokeswoman said: “We have been clear from the start on the principles underlying the UK’s approach: we are looking for a relationship that respects our sovereignty and has a free trade agreement at its core, similar to those the EU has already done. agreed as mindset countries.
READ MORE: EU rejects UK’s new plan to keep busy shipping lanes open after Brexit
However, the EU continues to insist not only that we must accept the continuity of EU state aid and fisheries policy, but also that this must be agreed before any further substantive work can be carried out in any other area of the negotiation, including legal texts. , making progress unnecessarily difficult.
“We will continue to work hard to reach an agreement and we look forward to the next round taking place next week.”
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